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Sunday, August 10, 2014

Let’s cut to the chase on nutritional yeast. Holy gross
name. Holy gross-looking. And in a showing of true nastiness, its package has a
recipe on the back for something called “yeast cheese,” which sounds like a
condition your lady doctor would prescribe a cream for, not something you’d
spread on nachos.

Let’s be serious: I wrote this blog post so I could say “yeast
cheese”

I’ve been hearing rumblings from my vegetarian friends about
nutritional yeast for a few years. They say it’s so awesome! And tastes so
cheesy! You’ll totally love it!

Although this “cheese” comparison is supposed to endear me
to nutritional yeast, it actually makes me trust it even less. If there’s anything
that can make me mistrust a food, it’s describing it as “cheesy” when it’s so
clearly not cheese. I’ve been down that road, vegans. Your soy slices are not
cheese and aren’t fooling anyone. You know what I say to that?

And yet, nutritional yeast is often compared to cheese by
crazy vegans who’ve obviously forgotten what actual cheese is supposed to look
and taste like. Nutritional yeast is not cheese. It’s a big sack of yellow flakes.

So anyway, a couple of months ago, I spent an entire blog post hating on kale and ended it with a sincere plea to my friends and readers
(who, let’s face it, are really all the same people): Don’t tell me how awesome
kale is. I don’t want to hear it.

Well, ya’ll bitches didn’t listen, and instead, my Facebook
page was deluged with recipes from friends who promised that kale is “amazing”
in soup and smoothies, and whatnot. And I admit: I actually tried one of the
recipes in spite of myself. It was from my friend Corinne, who had enough good
sense to move to Hawaii that I thought I should trust her culinary choices.

OK, Corinne, you win: Your
terrible, punishment-worthy sounding suggestion of sprinkling kale with nutritional
yeast is worthy of the “amazing” moniker. Her recipe is a lot
more involved (and probably tastier and healthier) than what I did, which is just rub kale leaves with olive oil, and sprinkle them with
roughly 1/3 cup of nutritional yeast, ¼ teaspoon of garlic powder, and salt to
taste.

It really is yummy. But it's still not cheese.I eat it right out of the bowl, although I think
some people might bake it into “chips.” If you want that recipe, you’re on your
own.

And if you want to know how Hawaii Corinne eats her kale, here
is the recipe, in her own words:

Pull kale off the
stem and break up into big bite sized pieces. Wash and dry well and put into a
large bowl. On the stovetop in a sauté pan heat a couple of tablespoons each
grapeseed oil and sesame oil (if you don't have one or both of these, seriously
any other oil will do in a pinch) when the oil is super hot and rippling throw
in a big old handful of pumpkin seeds. I LOVE the Ayurvedic kind from the bulk
bins at Whole Foods because they are already nice and spicy and seasoned. Toast
until lightly browned, should only take a minute or so. Pour this hot
oil/pumpkin seed mixture over the kale and let sit for a minute or two until
the oil is not too hot to touch. Get in there with your hands, and massage the
crap out of that stuff, getting the warm oil into all the nooks and crannies.
At the end add a dash of soy sauce and a heaping helping of nutritional yeast
for a cheesy salty kick and viola! This is so good I can eat nothing but two
bunches of kale done this way for dinner.I was
so surprised that kale with nutritional yeast tasted good that I went out and
bought a blender so I could make a berry-yogurt smoothie with just a little bit
of kale in it. Not only was the blender a piece of crap that caused this to
happen…